Learning About the Past
Newfoundland and Labrador Adult
Basic Education Social History Series
A Joint Project of
The Writers' Alliance of
Newfoundland and Labrador
and Cabot College Literacy Office
In This Series...
Book 1 - Timelines of Newfoundland and Labrador
Book 2 - Facing the New Economy
Book 3 - Learning About the Past
Book 4 - Desperate Measures The Great Depression in Newfoundland and Labrador
Book 5 - Health and Hard Time
Book 6 - Multicultural History
Book 7 - Surviving in Rural Newfoundland
Book 8 - The Struggle for Work in the Great Depression
Book 9 - How Long do I Have to Wait?
Book 10 - William Pender The Story of a Cooper
Book 3: Learning About the Past
© Copyright 1996-Writers' Alliance of Newfoundland and
Labrador
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means without the written permission of the
Writers' Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Box 2681
St. John's, Newfoundland
A1C 5M5
Lay- out and Design: Walbourne Design Associates Ltd.
Thanks to the National Literacy Secretariat and the Canada/Newfoundland Cooperation
Agreement on Cultural Industries for funding this project.
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Newfoundland adult basic education social history series.
Partial contents: Bk. 3. Learning about the Past
ISBN 1-896858- 02-3 (bk.3)
1. Readers for new literates. 2. Readers (Adult). 3. Newfoundland- History. 4. LabradorHistory. 5. Writers' Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador.
PE1 126.A4N48
1996
428.6'2
C96- 950124- 2
Printed in Newfoundland and Labrador by Robinson Blackmore Printing Ltd, St. John's, on
acid- free paper.
Table of Contents
Foreward
Acknowledgements
Time Travel with Stories
Counting the Berries
Hard Boots and a Hoe
Topics for Discussion
Questions for Discussion
Projects
Learning About the Past from Old Newspapers
Introduction
Microfilm
News Stories
Editorials
Letters to the Editor
Ads
Notes for Instructors
Questions for Discussion
Learning About the Past from Interviews
Why Interview?
Finding People to Interview
Getting Ready for the Interview
Using a Tape Recorder
Doing Interviews
After the Interview
Notes for Instructors
Topics for Discussion
Questions for Discussion
Projects
How I Wrote William Pender
Finding the Story
Looking in New Places
Shaping the Story
Main References
Foreward
In 1994, the Writers' Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador and Cabot College Literacy
Office combined to produce a series of Newfoundland books on tape. Under the general
title Increasing Access to Newfoundland Literature, the tapes and accompanying book A
Woman's Labour , offered ABE Level 1 students and instructors, as well as the blind and
the general public, an accessible and proven set of local literacy materials. The success of
that project led to a second collaboration: the Newfoundland and Labrador Adult Basic
Education Social History Series.
A major difference between the two projects is that while Newfoundland Books on Tape
dealt with previously existing material, the essays in the Social History Series have been
newly created by five professional writers. The prime objective, however, remains the
same: to provide adult learners with meaningful literacy mat erials drawn from their own
vibrant culture.
Topics in the series were chosen for their human and social interest and their importance
in shaping who we are today. In addition to historical topics, current social and economic
issues such as the closure of fish plants are also examined in an attempt to provide a
contemporary perspective.
The five writers employed on the project carried out extensive research in public and
university archives and libraries. Some also conducted personal interviews. Many of the
essays contain new and fascinating historical research. Often the pieces deal with
controversial subject matter: the Great Depression, Commission of Government,
workfare, the erosion of social programs, poaching and the future of our rural
communities. In an effort to dispel the notion that history is "dry and dull," the approach
is fresh and provocative. The object is to inform, entertain and, in conjunction with the
accompanying notes and questions, to effectively stimulate lively discussion among
literacy students. Consequently, this series will also be of interest and practical use to the
general public and, especially, to students.
The intended audience for the Social History Series is ABE Level 1 students. Because of
the disparate subject matter, however, the essays are written in varying degrees of
reading difficulty. In particular, students may need help with some of the quoted source
material as this sometimes involves archaic syntax and vocabulary.
Acknowledgements
The essays and accompanying notes and questions in the Newfoundland and Labrador
Adult Basic Education Social History Series were researched and written by Ed Kavanagh,
Carmelita McGrath, Janet McNaughton, Kathryn Welbourn and Kathleen Winter. The
series was edited by Marian Frances White.
Funding assistance was provided by the National Literacy Secretariat. Thanks also to the
Canada/Newfoundland Cooperation Agreement on Cultural Industries.
The coordinator of the project was Ed Kavanagh. Susan Hoddinott, Literacy Specialist at
Cabot College, provided overall coordination.
Thanks to Cabot College instructors Maxine Brown and Audrey Fofonoff for assistance in
workshopping the materials. Thanks also to the Adult Basic Education students at the
Parade Street Campus of Cabot College who participated in the workshops.
The writers would like to thank all those who kindly consented to be interviewed for these
essays.
The writers would also like to offer special thanks to Susan Hoddinott for her advice and
expertise, and to Patricia Warren and Amanda Will at the Writers' Alliance of
Newfoundland and Labrador.
Thanks also to Patricia Ralph and the participants at the 1995 Atlantic Summer Literacy
Institute, Jim Overton, Bert Riggs, Adele Sharpe, Robert Hong, Philip Hiscock, John Joy,
Gordon Snow, Gerri Rubia, Colleen Borek, Tony Murphy, Helen Porter, the staff at the St.
John's City Hall Archives and the staff at the Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and
Labrador (PANL), and the Newfoundland Lung Association. Thanks also to Anne Hart and
the staff at the Centre for Newfoundland Studies, MUN.
The Newfoundland and Labrador Adult Basic Education Social History Series is a joint
project of the Cabot College Literacy Office and the Writers' Alliance of Newfoundland and
Labrador.
Time Travel with Stories
by Carmelita McGrath
Credit: Rhoda Dawson, courtesy of the Centre for Newfoundland Studies Archives.
A woman stands by her doorway, The Battery, 1936. The drying laundry and the fish
flakes show two aspects of women's work in the 1930s. But even hard work was no
guarantee that you would have what you needed to live on.
Most of us have heard many stories. We hear them first when we are children. They give
us pleasure. We listen for stories all our lives, and people are always telling them. Most of
the time, we think of stories as fun. But stories can do many things. They can tell truths
about people's lives. They can show us the times and places where others have lived.
Stories can help us enter history. They can be doors that lead to the past. Here is a story
I heard as a young girl.
Counting the Berries
This story was told by a woman in Branch.
In the 1930s, many people in Newfoundland had to depend on government assistance.
People called it the dole. It could be as little as 6 cents a day for each adult in a
household, or $1.80 a month. It could be less for a child.
There were also dole inspectors. These men would go to houses and check how much
food people had stored up. Then they would decide how much dole people could get. This
was not cash, but a note for the amount of food you could get at the local store.
The dole inspectors looked very closely at what people had in their houses. If you had
flour left over, you could not get the full amo unt the next month. If you grew vegetables
or had an animal to kill, you might also get less dole the next month.
Many people tried to hide food they had saved so the dole inspectors would not find it.
They hid food in barns, under beds, in dirty laundry and even in wells.
This woman said that one dole inspector was very determined to find every bit of food
people had. Once, she hid her blueberries in an old trunk, but he opened it and found
them. She said he counted the berries. Then he told her she would get an allowance for
flour that month, but none for raisins. He said she had plenty of berries for making duff.
When I first heard this story, I thought it was a tall tale. Could such things happen? I
wanted to find out more.
When you know the time and place of a story, you can track it down. Books, photos,
newspapers and other records can break the barrier between the past and the present.
The story about the berries came to life in the Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and
Labrador. The Archives has ma ny kinds of information. It has government records for the
time in which the story took place.
The records show that the story could well be true. The amount of dole was right there
on a page. There was also a list of things people could get on their dole order. There
were hundreds of pages of other information. They told of a time when things were very
hard. The government thought it was spending too much money on the dole. It wanted
the dole inspectors to make sure that nobody got help they did not need.
In one file, there was a dole inspector's report. The man had searched houses. He
reported finding barrels of potatoes, when people said they had nothing to eat.
Other files had letters and reports from many people. Some told their own stories of
need. Others told what was happening to people in their area. Some wrote to demand
changes to the dole and the way poor people were treated.
The newspapers added more life to the story. Letters and articles showed what happened
day to day. They told stories of the time from different points of view. Ads showed the
price of things.
Out of all this information came an essay, and many more notes than the essay could
use.
Here is another story.
Hard Boots and a Hoe
One year in the late 1930s, a woman worked all summe r making fish on the flakes. It
was back-breaking work. There was a lot of fish that summer. The woman was tired all
the time, because she had to do her housework and look after animals and gardens too.
She kept herself going by thinking about what she would get for all the fish she was
making. Maybe she could get something nice-for herself or the house, or for her children.
At the end of the fishing season, she went to the merchant to find out what she would
get for her work. The merchant told her the price of fish was very low. When she paid her
bills and bought her food, she had only enough credit left for a pair of hard boots and a
hoe.
The woman in the story was my grandmother. From her I learned about the work women
did in the Newfoundland fishery. This little story is about many things. It is about work,
and what people may get for it. It is also about dreams and hopes. It is about the fish
trade and world fish markets. It is about merchants and prices. It is about women's roles
in one time and place.
This story has led me to much reading. And there are ways to find out more. The time
and place are in the story. But it could have happened any year when there was lots of
fish, but the price was low.
Sometimes, we think of the past as a far away place. We think we cannot get to it. This is
only half true. Stories can lead us to other sources. And sources can help us build larger
stories. In a way, stories help us travel through time.
Topics for Discussion
1. The value of stories as ways to learn more about the past.
2. How to use a story to build a picture of a person, place or time.
3. Research methods used to follow up on stories.
Questions for Discussion
Counting the Berries
1. What was the dole?
2. What were dole inspectors? Why was the woman in the story hiding food from
them?
Hard Boots and a Hoe
3. What was "making fish?" Why was it "back- breaking work?"
4. How did the woman in this story get paid for her work? Why didn't she know how
much she would get until the end of the summer?
General Questions
5. The past may seem to be "a far away place." How can stories help us know more
about the past and the people who lived in it?
6. What things do we need to know about a story before we can use it to do
research?
Projects
1. Tell or write down a story that someone told you when you were a child.
Discuss what this story tells about:
- the story teller
- the time and place the story comes from.
How could you find out more about life in that time and place? Make a list of
sources.
2. Pick a day. It could be any day at all, a day of historic importance, or the day you
were born. Find a newspaper for that day in the Archives or reference library.
What story of that day can you piece together from the newspaper? What were
people thinking about? What were they wearing? How much did things cost? Tell
or write what you find out.
3. Take out an old family photograph album. Look at the pictures. From the pictures,
what can you tell about the people in them, and the time and place in which they
lived? Tell or write a story about them.
Learning About the Past
from Old Newspapers
by Janet McNaughton
Introduction
Old newspapers let you look into the past. You can see what people read every day. You
can learn what they knew about the world around them. We use old newspapers to
understand how people lived, thought and felt in the past. Old newspapers also give us
facts about people and events.
Have you ever seen a pile of old newspapers lying around? Maybe you noticed that these
papers were starting to turn yellow and even to crumble around the edges. Newspapers
are printed on a type of paper called newsprint. This paper contains lots of acid. The acid
makes newsprint fall apart after just a few years. That is why old newspapers do not last
very long.
Microfilm
When we use newspapers to find out about the past, we almost never look at real copies
of old papers. They are large and dirty and difficult to store. They fall apart too easily.
Instead, we use microfilms. These are long strips of film, about one inch wide, with very
small photographs of each page of one newspaper, such as the Toronto Star or the St.
John's Daily News.
When a microfilm is made, each page is photographed, beginning with page one, for
example, of Monday, January 1, 1939. Every page of every day is photographed in order.
About two months of a daily newspaper fit onto one microfilm reel. Each reel fits into a
box about five inches square. This means that years and years of newspapers on
microfilm can be stored in just a few filing cabinets.
The pictures of newspapers on mic rofilms are far too small to read with your eyes alone.
To look at microfilms, we use a machine called a microfilm reader. This shines light
through a strip of microfilm, and through a magnifying lens. The lens makes the picture
bigger. Then the picture is projected onto a screen so you can read it. You move from
one page to another by moving the microfilm strip across the lens. Microfilms are
sometimes blurry and can be difficult to read.
There are many different kinds of information in newspapers. There are news stories,
editorials, letters to the editor, advertisements (ads) and classified ads.
News Stories
National news stories tell people what is happening in other parts of the country they live
in. International stories tell them about other parts of the world. When we read national
and international news stories, we learn what people knew about the world around them
and what they thought was important. For example, there are many, many stories in old
newspapers about the British royal family. Even the fact that the Prince of Wales decided
to wear silk shirts instead of cotton shirts was considered a news story in 1923. This tells
us that people in Newfoundland were very interested in the royal family at that time.
Local news stories tell us what was happening in the place where the newspaper was
published. This helps us to understand what that place was like. Some of the local stories
that appeared in the newspapers 100 years ago were more like gossip than news. For
example, in November of 1898, this story was printed in the St. John's Daily News:
An Outrage
About one o'clock yesterday morning, a messenger connected with a certain Water
Street...establishment, arrived at his home on Belvedere Street and, not finding
everything to his satisfaction, commenced abusing his wife. The poor
woman...made some reply in her defense, when the brutal husband jumped up
and, catching his wife by the throat, beat her unmercifully about the head and face
and then threw her violently to the floor. The parties who live next door, hearing
the woman's screams for help, rushed in and found her lying on the floor nearly
insensible with blood flowing profusely from the wounds that had been inflicted on
her face. When one of the neighbours threatened to call the police, the man left the
house and has not returned. Had this been a drunken squabble, it would not have
attracted so much attention, but the man was in his sober senses, and what
renders the affair more serious is that the women is in a very delicate condition.
This is not the first time this fellow had treated his wife roughly, but this last
exhibition of brutality surpasses anything that he has been previously guilty of and
may be attended with very serious results. 1
It is hard to imagine a story like that in the news today. What does this tell us about St.
John's 100 years ago? It lets us know that St. John's was a smaller place than it is today.
We could wonder if people felt closer to their neighbours than they do now. Maybe the
person who wrote the story believed he could change the way this man treated his wife
by making him feel ashamed.
Editorials
Editorials are written by people who run newspapers. An editorial is an "opinion piece."
Instead of giving facts, it tells how a person feels about what is happening in the news.
When we read editorials, we learn how the people who wrote the news felt about what
was happening around them. For example, in the early 1900s, many editorials and letters
to the editor in St. John's newspapers talk about Chinese people coming to
Newfoundland. Editorials written at that time call the Chinese "the yellow peril."2 These
editorials show us that people were afraid of Chinese immigration.
Letters to the Editor
Letters to the editor are written by people who want to give their opinions on stories in
the news. Most people write about things that are close to home. People disagree and
argue in letters to the editor, so we see different sides of the same story. In St. John's in
1919, some doctors were trying to raise money for a maternity home (a hospital where
women could go to have babies). Some people wrote letters to the editor of the Daily
News saying that they did not like this plan. They did not think unwed mothers should be
taken care of in the same building as married women. Their letters tell us how some
people felt about single mothers. (To find out more about this, see the essay "More
Sinned Against Than Sinning: Single Mothers and the Law in the Past," in book 5 of this
series.)
Ads
Advertisements (ads) can be lots of fun to read. We learn what movies were shown, what
kinds of clothes were for sale in stores, what kinds of foods were sold and how much
things cost. An auction is a sale where people tell the person in charge, called an
auctioneer, what they want to pay. If someone else wants the same thing, they offer to
pay more. This is called bidding. Each article is sold to the person who bids the most.
Sometimes, before an auction, an auction house will put a list of everything being sold in
1
St. John's Daily News, 21 November 1898, p.4 (unnumbered). Unmercifully means without showing any
mercy or kindness. "The parties living next door" is an old way of saying the neighbours. When the writer
says that "the woman is in a very delicate condition" he probably means that she was pregnant. The word
pregnant was thought to be rude and impolite to be used.
2
Editorial, the St. John's Daily News, 29 November, 1905, p.1. See Ed Kavanagh's essay, "Early Chinese
Immigrants in Newfoundland," in book 6 of this series.
the newspapers. If the auction is held after someone died, this could be a list of almost
everything the person owned. These lists tell us what kinds of furniture, dishes and
household goods people had.
We can even find out how people's ideas about health have changed by looking carefully
at ads. For example, ads for vitamins or tonics used to show thin women as unhealthy.
These ads promised to make women plump. Today, women are more likely to want to be
thin.
Old newspapers have lots of ads telling mothers to give laxatives to their children. Here is
one example that was published in some St. John's newspapers in 1923:
Mother! Child's best laxative is "California Fig Syrup."
When baby is constipated, has wind, colic, feverish breath, coated- tongue or
diarrhea, a half-teaspoon of genuine "California Fig Syrup" promptly moves the
poisons, gasses, bile, souring food and waste right out. Never cramps or over
acts. Babies love its delicious taste.
Today, we almost never give laxatives to children. If we wanted to know why these ads
were in the papers, we would have to ask about what foods children ate, and the ideas
mothers had about health and illness. If children did not eat enough fresh fruits and
vegetables, constipation may have been a real problem. But it seems as if the makers of
this laxative wanted mothers to believe that the digestion of food could be dangerous to
babies. To find out what mothers thought, we would need other kinds of information.
Maybe we could interview older women. But these ads give us a whole new way of
looking at, and thinking about, one small part of the past.
Classified ads are the ones that ordinary people put into the paper when they want to buy
or sell something, or when they want to hire someone for a job. These ads tell us the
prices of property and rents, the wages people were paid and about working conditions.
They also tell us what people expected from their employees. In St. John's in the early
1900s, many people hired young women to work as servants in their homes. These girls
did housework and helped to look after the children. In these ads, many people said
"outport girl preferred." This tells us something about the working habits of outport girls
and what employers thought of them.
Credit: Centre for Newfoundland Studies Archives.
The ads in old newspapers show us how prices have changed.
This ad appeared in Newfoundland News-Magazine in 1938.
Old Newspapers as a Source
When we were writing the booklets for this project, we all used old newspapers to help us
find some of the information we were looking for. But old newspapers only gave us part
of the picture- like a handful of pieces from a jigsaw puzzle. We put these pieces together
with other kinds of information, such as old letters and documents from archives,
interviews that we did with people and things we learned from books. Then our pictures
of the past were more complete.
We will never know some things about the past because no one wrote them down. Now,
all the people who lived in that time have died, so we cannot interview them. We can also
never be sure that the information in old newspapers is true until we check it with other
sources. But when we look at lots of sources, we are more sure of the facts. Our pictures
become c learer and easier to understand.
Notes for Instructors
The content and style of newspapers has changed quite a bit in the past 100 years, but
the basic form of the newspaper is pretty much the same. Today's newspapers contain
local, national and international news stories, editorials, letters to the editor, ads and
classified ads, just as older newspapers did. Students could be encouraged to go through
any daily newspaper and identify which articles fall under these headings. They may also
notice other areas (such as the "Lifestyle" section, and book and movie reviews) not
covered in this piece.
Old newspapers make the past seem very immediate, especially if they were published in
the community where your students live. Senior citizens in your area may have
scrapbooks or collections of old newspaper clippings. It may be possible to arrange a field
trip to a local public reference library, public archive, or university library, where students
may look at actual copies of old newspapers, or microfilms. If this is not practical, these
places usually have microfilm photocopiers that will allow you to make readable copies of
some pages of old newspapers. These machines are often very busy and sometimes need
to be booked in advance.
To make the most of your time with old newspapers, it helps to have a goal. Students
could find out what was happening on the days they were born, for example, or you could
pick a date that has special significance for your community. Changes in prices over time
are pretty amazing. Students could be asked to estimate how much money they would
have needed to live on in any given year. If this is done, each student or group could be
responsible for collecting the information on one topic such as food, housing, clothing,
entertainment, or wages. Making up the actual budget could be a group project.
The differences in language use and vocabulary is one of the most striking features of old
primary source materials like newspapers. I often wonder if the people who read these
papers were as confused as I sometimes feel. It may be useful to have students
"translate" the passage "An Outrage" into plain English. Depending on the level students
are working at, this could be a group or individual project, with or without aids such as
dictionaries.
Questions for Discussion
1. Name the three different types of news stories found in most newspapers. Can
you find examples of these three different types of news stories in a newspaper
printed this week? Which stories in this week's newspapers are most important to
you? Why?
2. What is an editorial? Who writes editorials? How is an editorial different from the
news?
3. What is a letter to the editor? Have a look at some letters to the editor in recent
copies of your local newspaper. If you were to write a letter to the editor, what
would you write about? Working alone or in a group, write a letter that you might
send to the editor of your local newspaper.
4. Have a look at some ads in the newspapers. Compare these with ads in
magazines and tabloid magazines like the National Enquirer and The Sun. Do
some of these ads seem more believable than others? Do the papers tell you if
they check out the ads before they accept them? How can you tell if an ad is
honest? What could you do to find out?
5. Why do we use old newspapers to find out about the past?
Learning About the Past from Interviews
by Janet McNaughton
Why Interview?
Interviews are a way to find out what other people know. Here in Newfoundland and
Labrador, a lot of our history has not been written down. Sometimes, we cannot just pick
up a book to find out what happened in the past, or to understand the work people did,
how they lived, and how they felt. But we can find out for ourselves by doing interviews.
Interviews are only one way to learn these things, but they are important. Almost
everyone has information about their own lives that no one else knows. Unless we
interview these people, that information is lost forever. People also have stories to tell.
These stories are more interesting than bare facts. Sometimes, people say things in very
special ways. Their words make the past more real.
Finding People to Interview
A good talker or storyteller with a good memory will usually give a good interview. Most
of us know someone like that. Sometimes, we hear about people from friends and
relatives. If you see a good interview in a newspaper, a magazine, or on television, you
can track that person down to interview.
An archive is a place that keeps papers such as old letters, photographs and other
information about the past. At Memorial University in St. John's, there is a special archive
called the Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive. Many
archives only have papers and photographs. The Folklore Archive also has interviews.
Most of these interviews were done by students in folklore courses. They are recorded on
tape, and sometimes transcribed (copied down onto paper). The Folklore Archive has
between 15,000 and 20,000 interviews. That makes it a good place to find people to
interview. When we were working on this project, some of us found the people that we
interviewed by looking in the Folklore Archive.
Getting Ready for the Interview
When we interview people, we ask questions. These are not just any questions that come
into our heads. Some of us make lists of the things we want to learn about before the
interview. Others write down the questions we want to ask.
Some questions are better than others. We look for the ones that will get the most
information. We try to ask questions that will not lead people to give us the answer we
expect. It is better to ask "how did you feel about doing that work?" than "I guess you
really liked that," or "you must have hated that." That way, we know the person is not
giving the answer he or she thinks we would like to hear. We ask different people the
same questions, to see how their answers match up.
Most of the time, the more you know, the easier it is to find out new things. Before we
interview anyone, we try to learn as much as we can. We look in old newspapers, in
archives and in books. We make notes. This information helps us to ask the right
questions. Most people will take more time to answer your questions and give better
answers if they see that you understand what they are talking about. Asking the right
questions is one way of doing this.
Before doing interviews, we wonder if some questions might upset the person being
interviewed. If so, how can we keep away from those questions? Sometimes, though, we
have to ask about upsetting things. For example, if you want to learn about the lives of
Chinese people in St. John's in the early part of the twentieth century, racial prejudice is
an important topic. Racial prejudice is the bad feelings some people have about someone
who comes from a different country or has different coloured skin. Racial prejudice makes
people act unfairly. Most people would rather not talk about racial prejudice, especially to
someone who is not a member of their own group.
If you are going to ask questions that may upset the person you will interview, you need
to think about how to ask those questions. Some questions should be left until the end of
the interview, or until you have done more than one interview with a person. Sometimes,
we do not know what upsets people until we ask the wrong questions. This is not the
nicest way to learn, but it teaches us a lot.
Using a Tape Recorder
Some people write down notes when they do interviews. But it is hard to write down what
a person says and be polite and think of the next question at the same time. Many people
use a tape recorder. The tape makes a complete record of everything that is said. It does
not mix people's words up or forget them. It leaves you free to think about what you are
doing.
Tape recorders are not hard to use. It helps to use a microphone that plugs in to the tape
recorder. Many tape recorders have built- in microphones, but these pick up the noise of
the tape going around inside the recorder. This adds noise to your recording.
You can practice using the tape recorder before trying a real interview by pretending to
interview friends, or just by letting a tape recorder record while you are at home. This
shows you where to set the volume when you record. If the volume is too low, you won't
be able to hear the tape. If it is too high, the recording will distort and be hard to
understand. You also learn how to point the microphone to pick up the best sound. It is
not a good idea to touch the microphone when the tape is being recorded. Every time the
microphone is touched, loud noises are added to the tape. If you put the microphone on
something hard, like a table, people sometimes make lots of noise with cups and spoons.
It is better to put something like a paperback book between the microphone and the
table. The "pause" button on the tape recorder and the off/on switch on the microphone
can make it look as if a tape is being made when it is not really recording. It is best to
leave those switches alone.
Everyone makes a few mistakes while, doing interviews. All of us have done at least one
interview that was not recorded by mistake. As we use the same tape recorder over and
over, we make fewer mistakes.
Doing Interviews
We usually phone people to ask if we can visit them before we do an interview. We
explain our project. We do not want people to think we are trying to sell them something.
It is good to tell the person where you got his or her name. This makes it easier for the
person to trust you. Tell people that you are looking for information and stories from their
own lives. Many people will say they do not know anything worth learning. You can tell
them they know things you cannot learn in books. It is a good idea to tell the person you
will be using a tape recorder. I always tell people I use the tape recorder so I do not
forget or misunderstand what they tell me.
Let the person you want to interview decide when you will visit. That way, you are likely
to have their full attention. Sometimes, we have to wait weeks to do an interview. A
person might have visitors from out of town, or might be sick. We never try to force
anyone to talk to us. It is disappointing when someone says no, but a person who does
not want to talk would not give a good interview anyway.
Doing an interview is scary at first. Will the person like you? Will you learn the things you
want to know? Each interview is a surprise. But most people are happy to talk about their
lives. When you do your first interviews, it is easy to get excited and talk too much. In
one of my first interviews, I talked to a woman about people she had known. I told this
woman everything I had learned about these people from books I had read about them. I
told her so much that she thought I knew everything I needed to know. I did not learn
what she might have told me if I had listened. I blew it.
To be a good interviewer, you have to be a good listener. You learn not to rush on to the
next question too quickly. You learn to be quiet and let people talk, even when they are
saying things you think you already know. Sometimes, what they tell you will surprise
you.
When you begin your interview, explain your project again. Tell about your project and
what the interview will be used for. Many people are afraid their interviews will end up on
the radio, or that lots of people will listen to the tape. You can make them more
comfortable by explaining what you are doing.
When you interview, it is good to keep the tape recorder running, even when you think
you are finished. Sometimes, when people relax, they remember stories and important
facts they had forgotten. But it is wrong to tape record anyone without permission.
Never, ever tape anyone without letting them know.
At the end of the interview, thank the person, and let them know that their help is
important. If you think you might want to come back again, say so. It is always good to
write a thank you note and show the person anything you will write using the information
you got from their interview.
After the Interview
Now the interview is over. We are left with a tape, or many tapes. It is important to listen
to your tapes as soon as you can, while the interview is still fresh in your mind. If
anything important happened that was not recorded on the tape, write it down.
Some people try to write down every word on their tapes. This is called transcribing.
Transcribing takes a very long time - —an hour or more for Just five minutes of tape. It is
easier, and faster, to write down a list of the things that are said without trying to catch
every word.
If someone talked about life in a lumbercamp, you could write down the subjects as they
were talked about: food in the lumbercamp, who did the cooking, how the beds were
made, problems with lice, getting around in heavy snow, caring for the horses and so on.
Most tape recorders have a counter. Start the counter at 000 at the beginning of the
tape. Write down the counter number when every new subject begins. That way, you will
always be able to find those subjects on that tape recorder again. What you write is
called a tape table of contents. (The counters work differently on every tape recorder, so
this only works well if you use the same tape recorder when you go back to the tape.)
Of course, sometimes people will say things that are so important, or said in such a nice
way that you really do want to write down every word. As you do your tape table of
contents, you can mark those places and transcribe them later. You can also put the
words you want to transcribe into your tape table of contents as you make it.
When the tape table of contents is finished, look for the things you do not understand,
and the things you want to know more about. If there are a lot of these, you need a
second interview with the same person. The second interview is more focused. We have a
much better idea which questions to ask, and what we can find out. But it is still a good
idea to give the person lots of time to talk.
When you have finished writing down the contents of your tape, you have collected new
information. Sometimes, this is information that no one else has ever collected before.
The facts and stories you have gathered on your tape can be used with written
information to help create a more complete picture of your topic.
Notes for Instructors
Successful interview projects have been carried out with school c hildren at the grade two
level. Collecting information by doing interviews has also proven to be a good way to
motivate reluctant learners in high school. For the adult learner, a project based on
interviews may seem more immediate, and less intimidating, than book-based learning.
Yet the challenge of creating a list of questions, doing the interview, processing the tapes
and creating a booklet or display will call many basic language skills into play.
An interview project may be carried out by classes working as a group, in pairs, or as
individuals. The topic should be simple and focused. Even if students are to work alone, it
is a good idea to brainstorm to develop a common list of topics or questions, and have
students practice using the tape recorders and doing interviews together before they set
out to do actual interviews. It is often good for students to begin by interviewing family
members or acquaintances, especially if self-confidence is an issue. For a more detailed
look at interview-based projects and how to design them, see The Voice of the Past: Oral
History, Paul Thompson, (Oxford University Press, 1978). Thompson gives examples of
simple, successful projects, detailed instructions on interviewing and sample questions on
many topics related to e veryday life.
For students in St. John's who are interested in the idea of learning from interviews, it
may be worthwhile to arrange a field trip to the Folklore and Language Archive at
Memorial University of Newfoundland. Contact Philip Hiscock at 737-8401.
Interviews are everywhere in our mass media. You may wish to have students look at
interviews in newspapers and magazines and on TV. In media interviews, the interviewer
will often lead the person being interviewed to say something that fits the "angle" of the
news story. Sometimes, interviews seem designed to provoke a certain emotional
response as well. Understanding this is a part of "media literacy." You may ask your
students to study the interviews they see on the news, and try to decide what the
interviewer was trying to accomplish.
Topics for Discussion
1. Differences between written language and spoken language.
2. Interviews on radio and television: are they always fair?
3. If students are doing an interview project, they may wish to discuss the difference
between interviewing someone for information and the interviews they see on the
television or hear on the radio.
Questions for Discussion
1. Why do we need to do interviews?
2. How can you find people to interview?
3. Pick a topic that you are interested in. Make a list of questions you would ask if
you were going to interview someone about that topic. If you needed to know
more about the topic before doing the interview, where would you look?
4. List the steps in an interview project.
Projects
1. Life in my town 50 years ago.
2. Going to school in my grandmother's time.
3. Food people ate in the 1930s.
4. What it was like to come to Newfoundland as a new Canadian.
5. An important event in your town (for example: the building of a new fish plant or
business, a fire, the opening or closing of an important service such as a hospital
or business).
6. An important event in history (for example: World War II, Confederation with
Canada, the moratorium on the cod fishery.
How I Wrote William Pender
by Kathleen Winter
Finding the Story
I did not know one thing about William Pender or his world. I went to the library at MUN.
Anybody can go there. There is a wonderful room in there where you can hunt for stories
that have happened here. It is called the Centre for Newfoundland Studies.
There are people who help you. You tell them what kind of story you are hunting. They
go in a big back room where they keep all the stories. There are whole stories and bits of
stories. You can use the bits to piece together old stories that no one ever found out
before. Or you can make new stories.
I wanted to find a story about a working man around 1900 in St. John's. I found some
essays about that. One said there was a man who made barrels. Barrel makers were
called coopers. They had a strike in 1904. This one man never found work again. He
wandered over the South Side Hill and perished.
That was all it said. It did not say his name. The rest of the essay talked about something
else.
If I write something I like it to teach me. I want it to thrill me. I want to feel as if I am
hunting treasure. It feels like when we did scavenger hunts as kids.
I decided I wanted to find out who the barrel maker was. I wanted to see his world, and
smell it and taste it.
First I needed his name. If he died in a strange way, he would probably be in the
newspaper. The same library has newspapers in the basement. They go back in time. I
found St. John's papers from 1904.
St. John's had a lot of newspapers in those days. They told different kinds of news. They
still had The Evening Telegram. They also had the Daily News. Then there was a paper
that told a lot of working man's news, and another one that told rich people's news.
I looked in them all to find the name of the barrel maker who died. I did not know the
date of the strike, so I looked through every day's paper in all of the papers starting in
January of 1904. Finally in October, after reading hundreds of papers, I found the strike.
The strike was over in November. That meant the barrel maker could have died a few
months later, in the winter of 1905. So I looked through 1905 papers too.
Finally, in June of 1905, I found a speech by the Roman Catholic Archbishop Howley. I
found my barrel maker. His last name was Pender. His first name began with the letter
W.
That was the only vital statistic I ever found out about him. But something exciting had
happened to me along the way.
When you read newspapers from the past, day after day, you catch a thrill from those
days. Those days in the winter of 1904 and 1905 were not like ours. The first part of my
story tells all about what I found. I called it "The Golden Dream." Golden, because people
were caught up in an age of discovery and hope in a new land. Dream, because in the
end, that's all the hope really was. A dream that Newfoundland woke up from, to face a
grim time.
I looked in old newspapers for a long time. They gave me a lot of details about W.
Pender's world. By now I had started to call him William.
But newspapers only gave me certain kinds of information. There were other things I
needed to know. Like how coopers made barrels. And details about the scarlet fever and
other diseases the papers reported. And the kinds of clothes people wore. And the dishes
and furniture they had in their houses. And what they ate. And where William Pender
would have lived. What other working people worked at. Details of the strike. The names
and plans of the streets he walked. Where the cooperages were, and the tanneries, and
the cod oil factories, and the boot making factory.
What did a barrel maker or cooper do when there was no work? What did he feel? Where
did he go? Who was around him, and what were they saying?
What were the children playing in the streets? What kind of candy did they eat?
What was a cooper's wife like?
What was going on inside his head?
When I started to ask these questions, two things happened. First, I started looking in
new places for the answers. Second, when I found the answers, I had to find a way to
shape them into a story.
Looking in New Places
Once I got to know more about William's world, 1904 did not seem as long ago as it had.
It was less than a hundred years ago. William Pender was not the last cooper that ever
was. Maybe there was a cooper who was still alive. Someone who could tell me what it
was like. What kind of tools he used. What a cooper's shop smelled like. What a cooper
was like when he was a little boy.
The Centre for Newfoundland Studies has a file pile called a vertical file. I asked if they
had one about coopers. They did. It was a t hin file. It held one article. About a cooper
who lived on Leslie Street.
The article was old. The cooper was old. I wondered if he was still alive. I looked him up
in the phone book. I phoned him. He said I could come to his house and ask him about
his life.
One thing about crafts like barrel making is that they don't change. The barrels Gordon
Snow made in the 1920s were the same as those William Pender made before 1904.
Gordon Snow told me many things I could put into my story. He talked about where
barrel hoops came from. About games boys and girls used to play with the hoops. About
games they played throwing their hats on top of schooner masts. About changing times.
About strikes, and working man's wages, and moving away to find work in Ontario. About
what a cooper did to make extra money when the barrels were finished for the season.
About the times and dates the fish were salted and put in casks. About swimming with
girls on the south side of the harbour. Girls in woolen swim suits.
Gordon Snow sat on his couch and held a bit of paper the size of a playing card. He drew
small lines on the paper. One for each merchant's premises around St. John's Harbour in
1926. He looked at each mark, and saw the merchant's place. He knew how many barrels
that merchant bought from the cooper. He knew how many barrels were made from
scratch, and how many were rebuilt from old margarine tubs. He knew the names of the
candy the children ate. He knew where cooper lads went with their girls to see a penny
theatre show. He knew how coopers felt when coopering was replaced with barrel making
machines and cold storage.
Then I visited the Newfoundland Museum on Duckworth Street. They had a replica of a
cooper's shop, with his tools and his fire and his barrels. There was a replica of a small
grocery store too. A cooper's wife would often run a corner store in her house. Gordon
Snow told me his wife had one. I sat and looked in the windows at the cooper's tools, and
at his wife's boxes of dried apricots and raisins for sale, until I felt like I was there.
At the museum Colleen Borek helped me. She lent me two videos. One explained more
about the display I had just seen. It was all about coopers and other trades people in St.
John's around the turn of the century. The second video was about Newfoundland
furniture. It helped me see what William Pender's kitchen table would have been like, and
his day bed, and his bedroom furniture. The video helped me see inside his house.
I also went to the Provincial Archives in the Colonial Building. I found that place harder to
understand, but once I got the hang of it, I found some good things there. They give you
boxes and you don't know what's going to be in them until you open them. The best
thing I got there was Kate Vey's diary. It was pencilled in a brown scribbler in 1904. You
can see in the main story how I used it.
The Newfoundland Studies centre at MUN has an archive too. The people who work in
archives can find things for you that you could never find on your own. A woman at this
archive told me the lawyer John L. Joy used to study history, and he wrote a thesis all
about coopers and the other crafts and trades and factories in St. John's around 1900.
I knew John Joy. I had talked to him. But I never knew he wrote that thesis, and I never
found the thesis on any of my hunts because it was listed under his name. I was looking
under topics like coopering, factories and trades. I found his thesis and several papers he
wrote about coopers. He had done years of work on this topic, and he had put the work
together beautifully. He had done a lot more hunting than I had. His work was like a big
treasure chest full of doubloons.
I phoned him and asked him if I could use his work. I felt bad because he had done so
much of it. I felt like I was stealing it. But he said go ahead, that's what research is for.
To help people build on each other's knowledge. He had more things too, like minutes
from coopers' union meetings during the strike. I found out more about things from the
coopers' point of view. John Joy was very kind, and his work was rich and deep.
Then I remembered that St. John's City Hall has an archive too. That turned out to be my
favourite place to find things out, and to think about William Pender. I found out he
probably lived on the South Side Hill. I could see the hill out the archives window. The
archivist showed me photographs that James Vey took of St. John's in the winter of 1904.
She showed me a city insurance map from 1904 that let me picture the streets William
Pender walked. She gave me a glass loop that let me see the pictures close up. It let me
read the signs on shop windows, and see into the dim stores. I put all those details in the
story.
Finally I travelled on foot through the berry bushes to the tall stones on the Sout h Side
Hill where William Pender died. I touched the stones and made a fire. Older stories came
to me, from three hundred years ago instead of one hundred. The ghosts of old French
battles came out of the rocks. I visited Placentia, and saw old coins and muskets the
ghosts had dropped.
By now I was getting used to going back in time. Every night when I closed my eyes I
could see William Pender's world. I could see William Pender himself, with his black
moustache and his cap, and his T- handled snow shovel, as he shovelled the streets with
gangs of other unemployed workmen. Whenever I walked in downtown St. John's, I no
longer saw it only in 1996. I saw the present as a dream that hung like a veil over a very
real 1904, and a vivid 1698. I saw that what used to be there is just as real as what we
see there today.
Shaping the Story
Now I knew a lot about William Pender's world. At first I wove two kinds of stories
together. I wrote about him, and then I wrote about the things around him. I shaped the
personal details around the last day in his life. I had him do things I knew a cooper in his
situation would do. You can see what these things are when you read the story. But I
kept the factual things about his world separate from his story.
For example, I inserted small essays about the poor house, factory working conditions,
and hospital conditions, and Gordon Snow's memories, as separate boxes inside the main
story.
After awhile I felt this did not work. The reader kept having to jump out of William
Pender's story to get at these "side" stories. That works in some writings, but I did not
feel that it worked in this piece. I did not know what to do.
One night I asked this question: How would it be if I melted all the side stories into
William's main story? If I put everything inside William's head, or made it apply directly
to him, how would it flow?
That is what I did. I gave William Pender Gordon Snow's memories. I gave his wife the
recipe for curing scarlet fever. I gave his neighbour knowledge about what went on inside
the poor house. I melted all my research into his life.
That was a big step. It raised a lot of questions about how you get at the truth of a story.
And that is the main thing the story of William Pender has done to me. It has got me
excited about what history is.
When you read the story of William Pender, you can be sure that it is all true. Every
detail comes from real life. It comes from old newspapers and diaries, from old men's
memories, from poems and songs, and from things I have seen in my own life. It comes
from maps, and loneliness, and faces in old photographs. It comes from the tall stones on
the South Side Hill. It comes from life and mystery. And I know now that those are the
places that all our history comes from.
Main References
Interviews:
Interviews with Gordon Snow, Cooper
St. John's, summer 1995 and winter 1996
Broadcasts:
Newfoundland School Broadcasts
Industrial Crafts, by Emilie W. Gould, 1975- '76,
Centre for Newfoundland Studies (CNS)
Academic Papers:
Alexander, David G.; "A New Newfoundland: The Traditional Economy and Development
to 1934;" 1973; CNS HC 117 N4A38 1973.
Chisholm, Jessie; "Strikes in Newfoundland, 1890- 19 14;" from Proceedings of the First
Newfoundland Historical Society Conference, Shannon Ryan president , Queen's College,
16, 17 October 1986.
Joy, John L.; "Boxes, Casks, Cartons and Drums, A Study of Newfoundland Cooperages in
the 20th Century, especially as it pertains to the Salt Fish Industry;" Collection of John L.
Joy.
Joy, John L.; "The Cooperage T rade in St. John's, Newfoundland, 1870- 1914;" Delivered
by John L. Joy at the Newfoundland Historical Society, February 28, 1985.
Joy, John L.; The Growth and Development of Trades and Manufacturing in St. John's,
1870-1914; M.A. Thesis, Department of History, Memorial University of Newfoundland,
January 1977.
Ryan, Shannon, editor; Proceedings of the First Newfoundland Historical Society
Conference; Queen's College, St. John's, Newfoundland, 16, 17 October 1986, CNS FF
1026 N46 1986 C. 3.
Daily Newspape rs:
Daily News: Intermittent issues from 1902; Every issue from January 1904 to December
1905. Microfilm, MUN Library.
Evening Herald: All issues from 1904 and 1905. Microfilm, CNS.
Evening Telegram: All issues from 1904 and 1905. Microfilm, MUN Library.
Trade Review: Intermittent issues, 1901- 1903, CNS.
Articles:
Canadian Manufacturers' Association; Industry '67 Centennial Perspective; 1967; CNS.
Dyckson, Emily; "Not a Hula Hoop;" Evening Telegram, July 04, 1992, p. 15.
Morris, Don; "St. John's asylum: 'the saddest place in Newfoundland';" Sunday Express,
July 8, 1990, p. 27; CNS vertical file "social conditions".
Pocius, Gerald L.; "The Working World of Egbert Warren- St. John's at the Turn of the
Century;" CNS HD 9764 N4 P6 1988 File C. 1.
Porter, He len; "Growing up on the South Side;" Atlantic Advocate, September 1965.
Stacey, Jean; "Cooper Recalls the Good Old Days in St. John's;" Evening Telegram,
Sunday, March 29, 1992, p. 10.
Minute Books:
Importers' Association minute book 1893- 1920, Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and
Labrador, reference MG 634.
Record Book, St. John's Journeymen Coopers Union Special Monthly, Special, Quarterly
and Annual Meetings October 3, 1903 to May 7, 1908; copies in Collection of John L. Joy.
Record Book, St. John's Journeymen Coopers Union Committee Meetings September 3,
1903 to June 1908; copies in Collection of John L. Joy.
Videos:
(These videos were made available through the Educational Services Unit of the
Newfoundland Museum on Duckworth Street, St. John's, by Colleen Shea, Education
Officer:)
CL.08 Material Culture: Walter Peddle
CL.05b Hooked Mats: Talk by G. Pocius
CL.09 The Working World of Egbert Warren
Archival Materials:
Provincial Archives, Colonial Building, St. John's: GN6 (1898) Report of Commissioners
appointed by the Winter Government to enquire into agriculture and industries
September 1898 and March 1899
GN 4/2 Local Roads/Advances for potatoes
MG 634 Importers' Association minute book 1893- 1920
MG435 Patrick Tareham Grocer St. John's record books 1870- 1891
MG 701 Diary of Kate Vey
MG 311 Reports and personal papers of Trinity Bay brickmaker
MG 539 Cooperage corporation boxes
City of St. John's Archives, City Hall:
St. John's Directories, 1913 and 1915
Newfoundland Directory, 1877
City of St. John's insurance maps including the years 1904 and 1905
Photographs taken by James Vey in 1904
Books:
Adams, Fred; St. John's, The Last 100 Years (photographs)
Beeton, Isabella; The Book of Household Management , S.O. Beeton, London, 1861
Jenkins, J. Geraint; Traditional Country Craftsmen, RKP London, 1978
Peddle, Walter; The Forgotten Craftsmen, Harry Cuff 1984
Museum Exhibits:
Castle Hill Historic Site, Placentia; Dioramas, archeological materials and live
performance historical plays shown during the summer and fall of 1995.
Newfoundland Museum, Duckworth Street, St. John's; Partial exhibit of show titled "The
Working World of Egbert Warren," including model cooperage and attached grocery shop.
Walks and Day-Trips:
Walks through the old sections of downtown St. John's referred to in the story.
Walks along the portions of the South Side Road where William Pender lived and worked.
Campfire trip with a flask of brandy to the standing stones on the South Side Hill where
Pierre le Moyne d'Iberville and his men hid and confronted settlers from the Waterford
Valley at the turn of the seventeenth century.